When Ray Charles is concentrating he's like a piece of granite, nothing twitches, nothing, ... He sat for 25 minutes solid like that, like a stone, and I thought, 'Oh my God, if he doesn't like it I'm dead.' ... And then finally, after 25 minutes he started to talk back to the screen. I heard him say 'That's right. That's the truth.' .

I'm not in front of the camera, they are. I encourage them; I build up as much of their confidence and ego as possible. They've got to take control; I can't act it out.

The whole concept of the devil is a metaphor on one level.

I also know what looks good before the camera, how to move the camera, and how to get a story on the screen.

But a writer's contribution is literary and a film is not literary. When you take that stuff off the page, and cast the people who are going to fit into those roles, that's what being a director is.

I love actors and I understand what has to happen within a scene. Any scene is an acting scene and actors never act alone, so there has to be an interchange. If it's a dialog scene, if it's a love scene, it doesn't matter because you need to establish a situation.

Show business is one of those things that people can use to get themselves out of the lower rung of society.